The Schwartz Cloud Report

Cisco Forecasts Twelvefold Increase in Cloud Traffic by 2015

According to Cisco's first Global Cloud Index Report released this week, cloud computing traffic will reach 1.6 zettabytes by 2015, a twelvefold increase over last year's traffic, which topped 166 exabytes.

That translates to a 66 percent compounded annual growth rate (CAGR). The cloud today represents 11 percent of datacenter traffic, which Cisco says is growing at a CAGR of 33 percent and is expected to equate to 4.8 zettabytes (a zettabyte is 1 trillion gigabytes). By 2015, the cloud will represent 33 percent of datacenter traffic, according to Cisco's forecast.

Cisco said in a whitepaper that it gathered data such as server shipments from a number of analyst firms, where it calculated workloads by type and implementation. The company also assembled network stats from 10 enterprises and Internet centers.

Here are some of Cisco's other findings:

The number of workloads per installed traditional server will increase from 1.4 in 2010 to 2.0 in 2015.

The number of workloads per installed cloud server will increase from 3.5 in 2010 to 7.8 in 2015.

By 2014, more than 50 percent of all workloads will be processed in the cloud.

In 2015, global cloud IP traffic will reach 133 exabytes per month.

All of this is further validation of a significant transition of workloads from the datacenter to the cloud, but Cisco doesn't see the in-house systems going away anytime soon. Rather, the cloud will take up a substantial chunk of workloads and storage in the coming years.

Are these findings by Cisco consistent with where you see your organizations headed? Leave a comment below or drop me a line at jschwartz@1105media.com.